The Fresh Start: Big Goals and Small Steps

Each year, the calendar flips and we hear stories about new year's resolutions. New Year's resolution posts are all over social media. The new year can feel like a fresh start. For some, it creates incredible anxiety as they set goals then worry about losing sight of completing them. That worry is warranted…because only 9% of us see our new year's resolutions through completion.?(See article)

If a staggering 43% of us?expect to fail before February?(see same article), then why do we set resolutions in the first place? If we expect to fail, why do we try? And, why do we create goals so big that we know from the start we won't finish them?

If you can dream it, you can do it. Shoot for the stars! Follow your dreams! We hear this all the time. I love a big goal. BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) are exciting! Let's not stop dreaming…but let's start incrementally achieving towards that BHAG.

I believe as humans; we are wired to continuously improve. Our physical bodies are always making small adjustments as we move and as we age. Our muscles change when we exercise them differently. The foods we eat change our shape and our muscle mass. We are designed to adjust and evolve. Small, incremental changes - this is how our bodies and our environments are designed. So, what drives us to set massive goals when the calendar clicks to a new year?

Last January, I fell for this need to dream big. And I fell hard.

In November 2021, I, along with 2 friends, decided it would be fun to run another world major marathon*. One friend had already completed four of them and Berlin was last on her list. We all decided to throw our names into the lottery for the 2022 BMW Berlin Marathon. Having already completed six marathons with two of them being Chicago and Boston, this may not be considered a BHAG. However, after a pretty significant foot surgery in 2019 and a pandemic stopping all races for almost 2 years, this was a lofty goal for me and my newly designed foot. Plus, it was my first marathon outside the country. That's cool. We submitted ourselves as a team and hoped lottery luck would be in our favor.

On January 12, 2022, we found out we were in! Dreaming big became a reality pretty fast. This wasn't my first marathon, so I knew it's not the big goal that I had to focus on - it was the weekly training miles. The shorter runs before sunrise on weekdays; the longer runs on Saturday mornings when my cup of coffee was calling, the long runs that conflicted with vacation plans and required incredibly early start times and hobbling to the airport so that I could get the long run done before vacation…those were the new targets. The weekly mileage increases and the smaller accomplishment of completing each single run are significant motivators to achieving the big goal. The training prepares you for race day. You just can't skip it! (Well, you can, but you'll be even more miserable at the race and no one wants that!) Those smaller goals where I can check off the first track workout or the first run longer than a half marathon are the character-builders. By focusing on the day-to-day, I was achieving the big goal.

Why don't we look at new year's resolutions the same way? A big goal is a dream and it's fantastic to dream. But, to achieve the goal, we really do need to set smaller goals, celebrate the accomplishments, expect failures and then adjust when those failures happen. Perhaps it's not that we should avoid dreaming. Maybe we need to change our thinking when making that dream a reality. To create a BHAG, we think big. To accomplish a BHAG, perhaps we need to think in smaller steps.

That sounds like the work we do with our teams. Companies have larger, annual and quarterly goals. Customer feedback drives changes to our products. Some of the outcomes resulting from innovation are?big. We must break them down into smaller, iterative increments so that we can get fast feedback on what was created. If it achieves desired outcomes, we celebrate. If it does not, we evaluate, adjust, and learn for next time. Our scrum practices, product discovery practices, and OKRs can help us as we go.

Engineers, you have amazing ideas. Keep on dreaming big!

James Clear said, "You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems."?When it is time to make a dream a reality (or, test the hypothesis that your dream?should be?a reality), consider how you can plan for smaller, low-risk/high-value outcomes. What principles (agile, lean, or other) drive your iterative planning and outcomes as you?set smaller, incremental goals??What allows you/the team time to reflect and adjust as you learn along the way to achieving that BHAG? Is the customer giving you feedback on your outcomes? Or, is the team/a stakeholder/someone else guessing about the value? If it is a guess (and it almost always is a guess), put checkpoints in place to validate as you go. Think about the systems you have in place to help you achieve your goals. Think about the culture of innovation that fuels the testing of your dreams.

To close the loop on the marathon analogy - Marathon #7 was not the race I wanted or visualized. An injury during taper (the last 3 weeks before the race) left me running not one single mile in those last 3 weeks before race day. What saved me were all the miles I ran in weeks 1-17 of my 20-week training plan. I could have called this a fail because I did not finish in a specific time. But I achieved the goal I set out to do. Those targets I hit daily during training allowed me to complete that BHAG of tackling another Abbott World Major Marathon. The unrelated benefit was an incredible European vacation with friends that followed the race. Not sure if I will get the chance to do another marathon but I know I learned another lesson about achieving big goals by thinking small.

*The Abbott World Marathon Majors consists of 6 marathons (Tokyo, London, BMW Berlin, TCS New York City, Virgin Money London, and Bank of America Chicago). These are some of the largest and most renowned marathons in the world.?

Additional Reading that inspired this writing:

• Why We Set Unattainable Goals (hbr.org)
• Why We Often Fail When We Set Big Goals and What Actually Works - Tiny Buddha